Old School SEO Has to Go!

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to tank your search engine rankings. All you have to do is nothing. Old school SEO can harm your rankings more than you ever imagined. Never updating your SEO, not keeping up with the latest security practices, and an outdated design will sink your rankings and your business.

There are any number of people who think that just getting the website live is all that they have to do, occasionally updated with product, add in some social media and then forget it. Not only is this a surefire way to lose whatever page rank you managed to attain, it is also a really good way to experience the Mighty Google Banhammer.

Rules Change

If you haven’t taken a hard look at your SEO or your format for couple of years, you could be running afoul of Google without even knowing it. If you have an established clientele, it may be difficult to even notice. One clue should be the numbers that you’re pulling through Google Analytics. If your staff are not showing increases in first-time visitors, it’s time for a complete SEO and website revamp. You must especially stop using the following practices in order to improve your rankings and traffic.

A site page for every keyword variant.

Creating a new page for every keyword is less effective than it was even a couple of years ago. Google now understands that this is targeting their bots instead of actual users and will actively penalize websites found to be using this growth strategy. Condense your variants onto one page, and integrate them with the content.

Multiple micro-sites and websites.

Spreading your content around might seem like a great idea, but it’s not. When these sites are searched and then indexed, Google algorithms will pretty much discount any duplicate content. You no longer need a .mobi site to showcase your content to a mobile audience, a modern website is accessible across all devices from desktop to phone. This can happen accidentally, or for shady and deceptive reasons – either way it’s time to shake out the doubles.

Keyword stuffing.

This is a big no-no. Yes, creating attractive SEO content relies on keywords. Google leans towards content that is made for users instead of box. Over stuffing keywords in an effort to boost your rank will introduce you to the Mighty Banhammer via the Penguin algorithm in short order. Content should be keyword centric, but not a bombardment of keywords. Latent semantic indexing keywords should constitute no more than 80 percent and exact match keywords no more than 30 percent when you are creating content.

What can really help your rankings is to work with dedicated experts who will build your site to be attractive and secure, tweak your SEO to bring you traffic, and work out a digital marketing strategy for your business. Even a small business can benefit by working within its means to hire experienced professionals to keep them on the right side of the banhammer.

About 4 Step Studio

4 Step Studio is an online marketing agency that specializes in website design and redesign, SEO, social media and more. Our team of experts focuses on helping small business get found online, while educating them on what will make them successful in the digital world. To learn more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.4StepStudio.com